Digging in to Hal Lebovitz's books

Hal Lebovitz had a lot of books. And I mean a LOT of books.

In addition to my regular web, editing and layout duties here at The News-Herald, right now I'm working on a project to organize Hal's books. Last month Jim Ingraham wrote a column about the collection, which I would recommend reading to get an idea of the type of books I'm dealing with. In addition to the rare and old books Jim discussed in his column, Hal had a LOT of books published in the last 40 years, seemingly about every sport, athlete and writer that has existed.

The collection will be auctioned off, and all proceeds from the sale will go to a foundation in the Lebovitz family name at Lakeland Community College. (The date of the sale, along with other details, will be announced at a later date.) Lebovitz — a former News-Herald and Lorain Morning Journal columnist, and longtime sports editor of The Plain Dealer — was inducted into the writer's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000. He died in 2005.

So far, I've just been sorting the books by sport. Further divisions will be team, year and athlete, as well as media guides. There are also several general books on sports, the science of sports, records, trivia, dictionaries, encyclopedias and more.

One neat item I came across in my first day of sorting was a copy of the paper detailing what each of the 1948 World Champion Cleveland Indians earned for winning the World Series. Most of the players got about $6,700. I'm not sure how that page will fit into the final collection, but it is probably my neatest find so far.

Once the collection is a little more in order, I'll take pictures of all the boxes to show the expansiveness of the collection. For now, here are a few books I came across last week that made me chuckle.

An Ohio favorite, and someone who ain't no bum (any ideas who that is?).

For the aspiring football players: how to handle the ball or how to kick the ball.

If "The Thinker" played hockey, and a good hit.

Love the illustration and the short shorts on this one.

Bobby Knight coaching at Indiana University. Check out that jacket!

I'll continue to post updates of my progress on this blog. Stay tuned!